Financial pressure changes how leadership teams decide. A decision that should take a fortnight is still unmade after four meetings. The conversation everyone knows needs having doesn’t get had. Everybody agrees in the meeting and by the next one nothing’s agreed. None of it appears as a line in the accounts. All of it costs money.
That’s The Hidden Tax™, and it’s what this show is about.
Lesley Thomas is a Money Behaviour Expert and a Masters qualified Executive Coach who works with leadership teams at PE-backed, founder-led and rapidly scaling businesses, measuring what financial pressure is doing to the judgement of the people making the decisions and what that’s costing.
She’s the creator of The Emotional Balance Sheet® and an Amazon No.1 bestselling author.
Each episode of the podcast looks at where the cost accumulates, why nobody attributes it, and what leaders do once they can see it.
For CEOs and finance leaders in businesses under real financial pressure.
🧮 Hidden Tax™ Calculator
https://lesleyathomas.kartra.com/page/hiddentaxcalculator-interest (https://lesleyathomas.kartra.com/page/hiddentaxcalculator-interest)
🔗 Connect with Lesley on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-thomas (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-thomas)
📩Email
lesley@themoneyconfidenceacademy.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
#214 What to Look for in a Leadership Team You've Just Backed
What should investors really be watching after putting money into a business?
In this final episode of Series One, Lesley Thomas speaks directly to investors, private equity, growth capital, and board members about what happens to leadership decision-making once financial pressure changes the conditions around a management team. She explains why the team you assessed before the deal is not necessarily the team you have once the deal is done.
Lesley explores the warning signs that can reveal hidden shifts in judgement, from decisions taking longer and items being carried between board meetings to increasing requests for analysis, compliance disguised as agreement, and bad news arriving later than it should. She also explains why investors can be both a source of the pressure and the people furthest from seeing its effects.
You'll learn:
Why the leadership team you assessed before a deal may behave differently once financial pressure increases
How the conditions created by investment can quietly change leadership decision-making
The three things management teams are unlikely to tell investors, even when they are affecting decisions
Seven warning signs investors should watch for during the first 18 months
Why repeated requests for more analysis can signal a change in judgement rather than a problem with the proposals
How compliance can look like agreement when decisions are not genuinely supported
Why bringing bad news late can cost investors the time they need to act
How hidden shifts in judgement can contribute to performance problems and unnecessary leadership changes
Why measuring leadership judgement in year one can be more valuable than replacing a management team in year three
How portfolio-level measurement can give investors a reference point across multiple businesses
Resources
🧮 Hidden Tax™ Calculator
https://lesleyathomas.kartra.com/page/hiddentaxcalculator-interest (https://lesleyathomas.kartra.com/page/hiddentaxcalculator-interest)
🔗 Connect with Lesley on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-thomas (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-thomas)
📩Email
lesley@themoneyconfidenceacademy.com
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow Financial Judgement so you never miss an episode.
New episodes are released weekly!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
22 Sept 2026
#213 Why this is a Money Problem, not a Training Problem
What if the leadership problem you’re trying to solve is actually a money problem?
In this bonus episode, Lesley Thomas explores why traditional leadership development may not address what financial pressure is doing to the decisions leaders make. While leadership programmes can improve communication, trust and collaboration, they may not touch the underlying relationship with money and risk that influences high-stakes decisions.
Lesley explains how our early experiences with money can shape how we respond to risk, why two experienced leaders can look at exactly the same investment and reach completely different conclusions, and why these individual judgements can quietly shape the direction of an entire business.
She also explores why leadership teams rarely examine their own relationship with money, and why measuring where each person's risk threshold sits can reveal gaps that traditional leadership assessments never see.
You'll learn:
Why financial pressure can appear as a leadership problem
Why traditional leadership programmes may not address decision-making under financial pressure
How early experiences with money can influence attitudes towards risk
Why two leaders can interpret the same financial information differently
How personal risk thresholds can shape major business decisions
Why senior leaders are rarely asked about their relationship with money
The hidden commercial cost of unexamined financial judgement
Why measuring judgement can reveal gaps that leadership teams cannot see from the inside
A question to help you recognise what you may be protecting against when making cautious decisions
Resources
🧮 Hidden Tax™ Calculator
https://lesleyathomas.kartra.com/page/hiddentaxcalculator-interest (https://lesleyathomas.kartra.com/page/hiddentaxcalculator-interest)
🔗 Connect with Lesley on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-thomas (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-thomas)
📩Email
lesley@themoneyconfidenceacademy.com
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow Financial Judgement so you never miss an episode.
New episodes are released weekly!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
15 Sept 2026
#212 The One Thing You've Never Measured in Your Business
What if the one thing driving every number in your business is the one thing you have never measured?
In this episode, Lesley Thomas explores why businesses measure revenue, margin, cash, pipeline and countless other outcomes, while rarely measuring the quality of the decisions that produce them. When decisions are delayed, avoided or quietly dropped, there is often no report showing what happened or what it cost.
Lesley explains why leadership judgement has traditionally been treated as something too subjective to measure, and why that does not have to be the case. She explores how measuring risk thresholds, certainty levels and decision-making under financial pressure can turn something the business simply feels into something it can actually manage.
As the first main series of Financial Judgement comes to a close, Lesley also shares a simple exercise to help you identify the gap between the number your leadership team says it will achieve and the number you privately believe is realistic.
You'll learn:
Why businesses measure the outcomes of decisions but rarely measure the decisions themselves
How delayed, avoided and abandoned decisions can remain invisible in traditional business reporting
Why leadership judgement has often been dismissed as too subjective to measure
How risk thresholds and decision-making behaviour can be measured under financial pressure
Why putting a number on a problem makes it easier to compare, discuss and manage
How private differences in expectations can create hidden gaps across a leadership team
A simple exercise to identify the gap between your official business plan and what you privately believe
Why measuring leadership judgement can reveal costs that would otherwise remain hidden
Resources
🧮 Hidden Tax™ Calculator
https://lesleyathomas.kartra.com/page/hiddentaxcalculator-interest (https://lesleyathomas.kartra.com/page/hiddentaxcalculator-interest)
🔗 Connect with Lesley on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-thomas (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-thomas)
📩Email
lesley@themoneyconfidenceacademy.com
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow Financial Judgement so you never miss an episode.
New episodes are released weekly!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
Inside a recent episode
#06 Lisa Johnson – What is Your Money Story?
Published 30 Nov 2021 · Transcript excerpt
[…] So I read books on money mindset and realized that all of those things that had happened to me in the past were having a major impact on my earnings. So I had tried for years to make six figures, like it was a thing in the back of my head that I wanted to make six figures. And if you actually look at it as someone who had a law degree, as someone that worked in investment banking, I should have already been making six figures, lots of others work, but I'd never been able to quite get that. Even in the wedding business, I was just short of it, like I kept getting just short of it. And when I did some money mindset work, I realized that I actually had a narrative in my head, which I wasn't vocalising out loud, but it was there, which was people who come from where you do don't make six figures. […]
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